'The Island at the End of the World' Book Cover

So, a few months back, a friend posted a link for a contest to design a book cover. Unfortunately, the contest was over by then, and the site now shows the results of the contest. But, the story and idea intrigued me enough to go ahead and create my own cover for the book. And after fighting with the design for a few months, I think I've come to a point where I'm finally satisfied with the result.

It definitely posed some challenges for me. One was that I was working with ink washes, which I've rarely done. I also had difficulty with the type, redoing the font a couple times. And the illustration, for a long time, was cast in a blue-green tone, but changing it to a golden tone seems to have helped out a great deal. There were also conceptual issues. The contest didn't give a lot of details on the characters, but since my design was so focused on them, I had to take some chances and hope that in the end I got their appearances right.

I'm a big book reader, and doing book illustration has long been a dream of mine. You don't see a lot of it done outside of childrens books and comics, but who knows, maybe one day there will be a rebirth. And I hope I can be a part of it.